Thursday, February 9, 2023
3:36 a.m. Room P3, Wisma Flamboyant
Payakumbuh, Sumatra, Indonesia
I made a mistake this morning. I was woken up by slamming doors, shouting voices, and a large truck backing out of the parking lot. I checked my bedside phone, and I saw that it was just after six in the morning. I decided to get up, so I quickly showered and made a cup of coffee. However, when I turned on my computer, I noticed that it was actually three in the morning, not six. My failing vision tricked me when I looked at the numbers. But since I am awake and showered, I thought I would at least write a bit about yesterday. Perhaps I will try to go back to sleep afterwards. Perhaps not. I am going to stay here in Payakumbuh today, so I don’t have to think about having energy for riding the bike. And I have a lot of other things to do.
Yesterday was a wonderful day. I was hoping to be on the road before sunrise. I didn’t quite hit that target, but I got close. It was still cool even though the sun was slightly above the horizon. And I was able to enjoy all the activity in the nearby villages as children were being sent off to school and people were starting their work day. As expected, the road began to climb immediately outside of the town, and it climbed steadily all the way to the first landmark: the equator monument. The monument wasn’t much of a monument. It didn’t have a single word on it in any language to even explain what it was. That surprised me. It consisted of a large red and white ball on a platform. The top red portion represented the northern hemisphere and the bottom white portion represented the southern. But there wasn’t a single sign explaining anything in any language. Not even the word equator was written anywhere. If you did not know in advance that the equator line was there and hadn’t read about this monument before arriving, you would likely go right past it. I’m sure you’d see the red and white ball. It would be hard to miss. And you’d probably wonder for half a second why it was there. But you’d never know what it was for. Luckily, I was armed with this information in advance, and I was able to appreciate the moment. As I noted in an Instagram post and a YouTube Community tab post, it’s not every day of your life that you find yourself at the equator. The majority of people in the world would likely never do that even once.
The equator monument was about twelve kilometers from my guest house in Pangkalan. I’d climbed steadily and slowly the entire time to reach it, and the road got progressively steeper as I went. However, I was pleased to note that even on the steepest grades, I was able to cycle without much issue. I was going slowly, of course. My speed ranged from three and a half to six kilometers per hour. That is walking speed, and I had one funny moment when an elderly man greeted me as he came out of his house at the side of the road. He was on his way somewhere, and he walked beside me for a while and we chatted. Despite his advanced age, he kept up with me effortlessly.
The terrain became increasingly mountainous as the day went on, and I stayed in the lowest gears and climbed slowly for the next twelve kilometers as well. I was quite pleased about that. For one thing, my knees gave me no trouble at all. I felt like my old self, and my legs and knees and feet were able to turn the pedals non-stop for four to five hours covering a full 23 kilometers without a single problem. I was also pleased because the road never went down. There’s an entirely different psychology to cycling along a road that goes up and down constantly. You spend the entire day cycling slowly up a hill and then racing down the other side. You do this dozens of times, and it involves a lot of changing of your pace. A ride like yesterday consists essentially of just one long climb and one long descent. I climbed for several hours for the entire 23 kilometers to the top. You enter almost a meditative state as you put your head down and apply yourself physically and mentally to turning the pedals.
The scenery was beautiful the entire way. And there was a lot of activity at the side of the road, and I was constantly greeting people along the way. I eventually did see a lot of monkeys, but they turned out not to be a concern at all. Rather than jump on me and my bicycle like a thieving horde, they saw me coming and disappeared into the jungle. Only a couple of times were monkeys still at the side of the road watching me as I rode past. And even those eventually vanished into the trees when I came up beside them. They were not aggressive or brazen in any way. They were certainly much more nervous about me than I was about them.
A great unexpected pleasure was the Obama Resto and Coffee. I’d noted this oddly named place on Google Maps, but I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. I thought it would be exactly the same as any other roadside stall selling simple drinks and snacks. But it was much more than that. It was a full-on specialty coffee shop with beautiful views of the mountains and valleys. I almost rode past the place because I was more in the mood to just keep cycling. I was happy to be in the saddle and pedalling. But on impulse, I turned my front wheel into the parking area, and I ended up being very glad that I did. The owner of the coffee shop was quite friendly, and he spoke just enough English that we could communicate and hang out a bit. The interior of the coffee shop looked similar to any fancy coffee shop around the world and had all the bits and bobs and special gear you need to make gourmet coffee. Their specialty was a coffee from Aceh that they called V60. It was processed with a wet fermentation method, and this created a fruity, perhaps tangy flavor. At first, I wasn’t convinced that it was coffee. It didn’t have that classic coffee aroma or even flavor. To be honest, I don’t think that I would order it again. I had mine iced, and they called the iced version of V60 a Japanese coffee. It was tasty, but it struck me as more of an iced fruit drink than coffee.
At that point in my day, I was fully expecting to continue climbing up a steep grade for hours longer. In fact, I had developed a plan to spend the night in my tent at Kelok 9, which was about six kilometers up the road from Obama Coffee. I thought breaking the journey there would be wise considering there were many more hours of uphill climbing to be done to reach Payakumbuh. However, the owner of Obama Coffee supplied me with some interesting news. He said that I was already pretty much at the top. I’d have to ride uphill for perhaps half a kilometer more and then it would be downhill or flat all the way to Payakumbuh. That changed the landscape of my day considerably, and I went back to my original plan, which was to spend the night in the big city of Payakumbuh. In fact, I would spend two nights and one full day in Payakumbuh, and then complete the last portion of climbing to Bukittinggi after a rest day.
I don’t fully trust local informants, but after leaving Obama Coffee, I soon discovered that this informant knew what he was talking about. I continued to climb for a little while, and then the road suddenly turned to the left, away from the vast cliff ahead, and started to go down. And I was able to almost coast the entire way to Kelok 9. In fact, I moved so fast that I arrived at Kelok 9 much sooner than I expected. The place snuck up on me. And once I saw the place with my own eyes, I finally understood how it all worked. From Google Maps and other online sources, I was left confused about what this raised highway system was supposed to accomplish. I didn’t even fully understand the path you were intended to follow through the complex doodle of highway. But once I was there, it became clear instantly. The valley itself was quite steep here, and Kelok 9 was essentially an artificial set of switchbacks. Rather than the switchbacks being carved into the sides of the mountains, they were mounted on top of massive cement columns creating an elevated highway that kept turning back on itself in several long loops and slowly raised or lowered passing vehicles up or down the valley. It was an impressive construction from every perspective.
The sides of the highway were lined with restaurants, and I stopped at one of the first ones for a light meal. I had mie goreng while enjoying the impressive views from the back of the restaurant. Many of the restaurants had set up Instagram-friendly selfie spots, and I posed in front of one of them with some local people I met.
It was great fun to race around the curves on my bicycle. I had the 360 camera mounted on the bicycle for this portion of the day with the hope that I could capture more views of this interesting road. And from there, the road continued to go down until I arrived in the town of Payakumbuh. I had been looking at a variety of guest houses outside of town, but I think those would have been expensive resorts in scenic areas. I ended up going past that area, which I know now is a tourist attraction called the Harau Valley. I rode right into downtown. I’d had trouble finding a low budget guest house to my liking, and it took some time until I chose a home for two nights. None of the places I saw pleased me. They were too expensive, I thought, for what they offered. I know that I should simply adjust my idea of what accommodation costs. It would make life easier if I just accepted that every night, I will have to pay 250,000 to 400,000 rupiah for a place to sleep. Local people keep telling me that 400,000 per night is cheap. That never makes sense to me. Do they all have that much money that they can afford that? It seems unlikely. So I don’t know why that is considered cheap. I still would like to find places that cost around 100,000 per night. But that is rare.
The owner of Obama Coffee told me about a budget hotel called Wisma Flamboyant, and I marked it on Google Maps as an option. I looked at another place first and considered a range of other options on Agoda. Yet, none of them seemed great. And the room I was shown at Wisma Flamboyant didn’t seem worth the 250,000 rupiah they were asking for. That’s the equivalent of $16.50 US or $22 Canadian per night. And for the average person on a holiday, or the average person with a normal income, that is a bargain. But I still hold out hope for the simple lodging that goes for $5-$10 a night. I guess I think in terms of a monthly rent. And if you pay over $20 every night, that’s like paying $600 or $700 a month. And I associate that with renting a nice apartment in Canada. Of course, my perception of what things cost in Canada is horribly out of date. An apartment there probably costs from $1,000 to $2,000 a month now. But I’ve never paid more than $200 to $300 a month in rent in my life. So paying $600 a month for hotel rooms seems expensive. And if I could find cheaper lodging, I would take it. But it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. The first place I checked out in Payakumbuh had rooms with just a fan (no air conditioning) and a shared bathroom. And that would normally be perfect for me. I would prefer a fan-only room with shared bathroom. BUT that would have to come with an appropriate price. Yet, even this room cost 200,000 rupiah. And compared to that, this room at the Wisma Flamboyant is a much better deal. It costs 250,000 per night, but that includes air conditioning, a large private bathroom, WiFi that actually reaches the room, complimentary water, coffee and tea in the lobby, a towel and sheets on the bed, toiletries, AND breakfast in the morning. There is even furniture in the room: a table and two chairs and a bedside table.
I might have gone for a different hotel that I saw on Agoda. It was called Kopay Hotel and Resto. The building looked nice in the pictures, and it cost around 175,000 per night through Agoda. I had to abandon that idea, though, because my phone ran out of power just as I was roaming around and looking at hotels. And it worked out well. Kopay is a bit cheaper because it is located a couple of kilometers outside of town. The Wisma Flamboyant is right downtown, and it is surrounded by restaurants and cafes. I had a good meal just up the street after I arrived. That turned into quite the adventure to end the day. I ordered a couple of different meals plus an iced tea, and while I was enjoying that, it began to rain. And it rained like the next world flood was underway. The rain went on and on. I tried to wait it out, but it rained heavily for so long that I became impatient, and I just left. I put my smartphone and wallet into a small plastic bag to try to keep them dry, and then I just went out into the rain. I got completely soaked by the time I got back to the hotel, but it was great. I was still wearing all my sweaty cycling clothes, and I could feel the rain cooling me down and washing away all the salty sweat.
I spent some time in my room copying all the video files of the day onto my two backup hard drives. And then it was time to sleep. Doing all that work at the end of a day always takes much longer than you’d expect, and I went to sleep later than I had hoped. And because of all the noise this morning and my mistake in looking at the clock, I woke up MUCH earlier than I had hoped. And I guess I will be tired today. But that’s fine. I have a lot to do, and I can use all the daylight hours I can get. And being up early, I will have an appetite by the time the hotel breakfast is ready at seven. And I can go to bed early tonight to prepare for the bike ride to Bukittinggi. Since I rode all the way to Payakumbuh yesterday, I have less distance to cover tomorrow. It is about 35 kilometers from this guest house to the famous clock tower in Bukittinggi, and riding that distance will involve climbing from 500 meters to 900 meters. It won’t be nearly as much climbing as yesterday, but it won’t be insignificant. I’ll have to be mentally and physically prepared to spend much of tomorrow in first gear and grinding my way up.